Ryan, former New York City police officer, was also found guilty on 10 misdemeanor counts of overdriving, torturing and injuring animals for underfeeding the same animals.

On July 29, 2017, investigators from the Hudson Valley Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, with the help of police, executed a search warrant at the barn located at Ryan’s home in the Town of Goshen.

Inside the barn they discovered the severely decomposed remains of five horses, as well as a severely emaciated horse, officials say.

“Four of the barn's 18 stalls contained the decomposed bodies of horses who had presumably starved to death,” the Hudson Valley SPCA said in a press release. “In one, an eight-week-old foal lay collapsed beside its mother in a nursing position. In another, an emaciated stallion, still very much alive, stood over the remains of his deceased friend. With no grain, hay or water on site, and without a way out of his locked stall, the stallion had been attempting to eat a wood window sill to survive. His hooves were overgrown, split and infected from exposure to the filthy floor. The remaining fourteen stalls were found to contain no animals but were filled with a foot or more of feces.”

The skeletons of six horses were found outside the barn, officials say.

A second search warrant was executed at Ryan’s farm by the Town of Goshen Police Department, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance’s Criminal Investigations Division, and the HVSPCA.

Among the items recovered was Ryan’s cell phone which contained messages between Ryan and her son pertaining to the care of the horses, officials say.

“The evidence in this case clearly supported the judge’s verdict that this defendant is guilty of felony Aggravated Cruelty to Animals for systematically starving ten horses, nine of which died,” Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler said in a press release. “But for the intervention of the Town of Goshen Police Department and the HVSPCA, a tenth horse would also have certainly starved to death. As a society we cannot tolerate the mistreatment of horses or other companion animals, which cannot protect themselves."

Ryan was remanded to the Orange County Jail pending her sentencing, which is scheduled for September 6.